Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1983

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Hokenson, Jan W.

Abstract

An historical profile of semantics, general semantics, and the philosophy of language in the 1920's and 1930's situates Beckett's work both philosophically and historically. In Molloy Beckett portrays the paradoxical nature of human language as both enlightenment and imprisonment, our sole vehicle for reasoning, but constituting in itself a limitation upon reasoning, as well as self-knowledge. The novel as a whole is about this unbearable gap between experience and expression, the essentially averbal self and language. This study traces, through the examination of events and changing levels of discourse in Molloy, the exact process by which the characters Molloy and Moran begin to perceive the existence of a separate reality beyond the reach of language.

Extent

57 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1983.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14165

Format

pdf

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